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Abstract Government programs promoting locally produced foods have risen dramatically. But are these programs actually convincing consumers to pay more for locally produced food? Studies to date, which have mostly relied on hypothetical stated preference surveys, suggest that consumers will pay premiums for various local foods and that the premiums vary with the product and presence of any geographic identity. This study reports results from a large field experiment involving 1,050 adult consumers to reveal consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) premiums for “locally produced” foods – mushrooms and oysters. Despite strong statistical power, this study reveals no positive effect of the locally produced label on consumer WTP. These null results are contrary to most of the existing literature on this topic. The finding that consumers are not willing to pay more for local foods has important implications for state and federal agencies that promote labeling campaigns that seek to increase demand and generate premiums for locally produced foods. 

Recruitment of representative and generalizable adult samples is a major challenge for researchers conducting economic field experiments. Limited access to representative samples or the high cost of obtaining them often leads to the recruitment of non-representative convenience samples. This research compares the findings from two field experiments involving 860 adults: one from a non-representative in-person convenience sample and one from a representative online counterpart. We find no meaningful differences in the key behaviors of interest between the two samples. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature demonstrating that nonrepresentative convenience samples can be sufficient in certain contexts. 

This special issue aims to extend the active discourse on applying behavioral science-based tools to policymaking in the fields of food, agriculture, and agri-environmental issues. Papers in this special issue evaluate the impact of behavioral science-based tools to understand their effectiveness and limitations. Additionally, for this introductory paper, we collected and analyzed data from the 91 submissions we received for this special issue to identify knowledge gaps and priorities for future policy research. Our findings show that behavioral interventions have small effect sizes but, when coupled with other policy tools, can have larger effects. We highlight that future research in these areas must aim to overcome the current shortcomings of the literature in terms of the use of hypothetical or low stakes in experiments, the focus on only measuring short-term behavior change, and the general lack of discussion on cost-effectiveness and mechanisms. Furthermore, we found that most behavioral science interventions in these submitted papers focused either on consumers or producers and thus offered little insight into other actors in the supply chain. We argue that a focus on better research practices is needed to improve policy-oriented behavioral science-based research in the future and note that accepted papers in this special issue were more likely to employ these practices. Finally, we offer six insights and recommendations for researchers and practitioners that arise from this special issue 

In the U.S., the fifth largest ‘‘crop’’ is vegetation dedicated to environmental conservation. Over 22 million acres of perennial covers are planted on environmentally sensitive land enrolled in U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), one of the largest agricultural conservation programs in the world. About half of CRP lands are enrolled through a complex reverse auction called the General Signup. The communication of program options to participants could have an important behavioral impact. Psychologists have found that information presentation in complex decision environments can interact with the bounded rationality and cognitive biases of decision makers. We tested two changes in the status quo CRP decision environment using an incentivized, lab-in-the-field experiment with 701 prior General Signup participants. First, program participants typically make an active choice over which cover practice to plant and how much of a discount to offer, where the discount is a reduction in their annual program payment. Changing that default to an opt-out, high-scoring offer resulted in a 13 percentage point increase in selection of the best practice and a 48 percent increase in the average discount. In the actual CRP, that increase in discounting would reduce total program costs by about $30 million per signup. Second, shifting to real-time updating of offer scores modestly reduced the frequency with which participants revised their offers, suggesting a reduction in transaction costs. From a policy perspective, these results suggest that small changes in conservation auctions could both improve the quality of conservation practices and reduce program costs. 

Using non-pecuniary interventions to motivate pro-environmental behavior appeals to program administrators seeking cost-effective ways to increase adoption of environmental practices. However, all good-intended interventions should not be expected to be effective and reporting when interventions fail is as important as documenting their successes. We used a framed field experiment with 308 adults from the Mid-Atlantic in the United States to test the effectiveness of an expert testimonial in encouraging adoption of native plants in residential settings. Though studies have found testimonials to be effective in other contexts, we find that the video testimonial had no effect on residents’ willingness to pay for native plants. Our analysis also shows that consumers who are younger, have higher incomes, and use other environmentally friendly practices on their lawns are more likely than other consumers to purchase native plants. 

Abstract Using recycled water to irrigate agricultural products can be an effective solution to water scarcity and security. However, a better understanding of how society values different sources of recycled water provides insights into potential demand‐side barriers to adoption of these solutions. This paper implements a framed field experiment conducted in the Southwest and Mid‐Atlantic regions of the United States that evaluates consumers' willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for three sources of recycled irrigation water: “gray,” “black,” and “produced.” Our analysis indicates that people consider certain sources of recycled water more acceptable for irrigating produce than others. Recycled gray water is preferred to recycled produced water, and both are preferred to recycled black water. We also explore how people respond to scientific information about the benefits and risks of using recycled irrigation water and found no evidence to support that this information changes people's behaviors. 

Managed retreat in the form of voluntary flood-buyout programs provides homeowners with an alternative to repairing and rebuilding residences that have sustained severe flood damage. Buyout programs are most economically efficient when groups of neighboring properties are acquired because they can then create unfragmented flood control areas and reduce the cost of providing local services. However, buyout programs in the United States often fail to acquire such efficient, unfragmented spaces, for various reasons, including long administrative timelines, the way in which buyout offers are made, desires for community cohesion, and attachments to place. Buyout programs have relied primarily on posted price mechanisms involving offers that are accepted or rejected by homeowners with little or no negotiation. In this paper, we describe four alternative strategies that have been used successfully in land-preservation agricultural– environmental contexts to increase acceptance rates and decrease fragmentation: agglomeration bonuses, reverse auctions, target constraints, and hybrid approaches.We discuss challenges that may arise during their implementation in the buyout context—transaction costs, equity and distributional impacts, unintended consequences, and social pressure—and recommend further research into the efficiency and equity of applying these strategies to residential buyout programs with the explicit goal of promoting spatial coordination. 

Abstract Experimental research in behavioral economics focuses on consumer behaviors. Similar experimental research on profit-maximizing producers is rare. In three field experiments involving commercial agricultural producers in the US, we detect evidence of anchoring in competitive auctions for conservation contracts related to nutrient and pest management that were worth, on average, nearly nine thousand dollars. In these auctions, the value of the starting cost-share bid was randomized to be either 0% or 100%. When the starting value was 100%, final bids were 46% higher, on average. We find weak evidence that experience with conservation contracts may modestly attenuate the anchoring effect.